The poetry I call "Tokuisei Verse" was developed over a period of several years on an internet web site called FREEREPUBLIC.COM. I would like to thank the owner, operators and financial donors who provide this public forum for allowing me, without condition, such a frivolous use of their bandwidth. Tokuisei is a Japanese word meaning singularity.(A point in space-time at which gravitational forces cause matter to have infinite density and infinitesimal volume, and space and time to become infinitely distorted) Tokuisei Verse is a direct descendant of the traditional Japanese Haiku. However it contains only nine beats. It is...

Haiku, a traditional form of Japanese poetry, is a short verse of 17 syllables in three metrical sections (lines) of 5-7-5 syllables. A compact yet profound and evocative form, haiku gives an objective, suggestive, pithy and fleeting picture of its subject. What is said is important but what is unsaid may be more important. The poet may talk of nature but what he is conveying may be some deep feeling, an intuition or a concrete experience of life. Haiku is more concerned with human emotion or with experience than with human acts, and nature is used to reflect or suggest...

Inside the cover of the new CD "Flowering Spade" there is a definition of a word. The songwriter was explaining the the word means something like this: A three-dimensional representation of something desired. (I was driving and unable to capture this interesting word) Words are my passion, and this was a new one. Thanks Neuromancer

Mel Gibson's Passion Sets New February Record Sunday, February 29, 2004 The Coming Soon! Box Office Report has been updated with the studio estimates for this weekend. Be sure to stay tuned there for the final figures on Monday afternoon. Exceeding all expectations, Mel Gibson's controversial The Passion of The Christ, about the last twelve hours of Jesus of Nazareth's life, earned an incredible $76.2 million this weekend from 3,043 theaters to average a big $25,041 per theater. That marks the all-time biggest opening for a film in February, surpassing the previous record of $58 million set by Hannibal in...

Angolan dies in Zimbabwe of suspected Ebola December 28, 2003, 02:45 PM An Angolan man has died in Zimbabwe's prime north western resort town of Victoria Falls in a suspected case of the highly contagious Ebola disease, the official Sunday Mail reported. The paper quoted the provincial medical director for the region as saying the patient, a cross border trader, died on Christmas Day after being admitted to hospital with symptoms consistent with the virus. If confirmed, it would be Zimbabwe's first case of the deadly virus, which kills up to 90% of infected people and for which there...

BRAZZAVILLE, Dec 8 (Reuters) - An outbreak of the Ebola virus has killed 29 people in northwestern Congo Republic, where the disease killed 120 earlier this year, a senior official at the country's health ministry said on Monday. "Right now the death toll in Mbomo is 29," Bernard Mantele told Reuters, adding that the percentage of people developing the disease after coming into contact with an infected person was also rising. State television said late last month 164 people had come into contact with the disease around Mbomo, some 700 km (440 miles) northwest of the central African country's capital...

Republic of the Congo: Ebola haemorrhagic fever - WHO Update 4 ---------------------------------------------- As of Tue 2 Dec 2003, the Ministry of Health of the Republic of the Congo has reported a total of 47 cases (confirmed, probable, and suspected), including 28 deaths, of Ebola haemorrhagic fever in Mbomo District, Cuvette Ouest Department. 97 contacts are being followed up. A team of experts from WHO Geneva, and the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network have joined the team already in the field, and will contribute to epidemiological surveillance, social mobilization and public health education, and support for diagnostics.

Deadly Ebola Virus Kills 18 in Northwest Congo Tue November 25, 2003 06:29 AM ET BRAZZAVILLE (Reuters) - An outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus has killed 18 people in northwestern Congo Republic, where the disease killed 120 earlier this year, state television said. One hundred and sixty-four people have come into contact with the disease around Mbomo, some 440 miles northwest of the central African nation's capital Brazzaville and just across the border from Gabon, Tele-Congo said on Monday night. Teams from Congo Republic's health ministry, the World Health Organization and aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres were in the...

Posted to the web November 21, 2003 Nairobi As on Friday, a total of 24 cases of Ebola haemorrhagic fever, including 12 deaths, in the villages of Mbomo (19 cases, nine deaths) and Mbanza (five cases, three deaths) in Mbomo District, in the country's northwestern Cuvette Ouest Department, were reported by the Ministry of Health and the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO said its staff had been working closely with both the ministry and Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Mbomo District to support case management, monitoring and social mobilisation activities with local communities. Meanwhile, WHO said its country office in...

Posted to the web November 19, 2003 Nairobi Eleven people of a total 18 confirmed cases of the Ebola virus had died by Tuesday in the Cuvette Ouest department of northwestern Republic of Congo, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported from the capital, Brazzaville. The report follows the latest meeting of the national coordination committee for the fight against Ebola. Meanwhile, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, the United States, reported on Tuesday that the first human trial of a vaccine designed to prevent Ebola infection had begun,...

With more than 13 already dead in neighbouring Congo, the authorities have issued guidelines against a possible domino effect. The health authorities in Gabon have taken measures to prevent the suspected Ebola outbreak in neighbouring Congo from spreading. At least 13 people are known to have died in recent weeks in a suspected outbreak of Ebola in the Cuvette area of Congo-Brazzaville, near the border with Gabon. When the last Ebola outbreak in Gabon killed 53 people a year ago, the authorities were accused of not doing enough to help those affected. There is no cure for Ebola, which causes...

BRAZZAVILLE, 17 Nov 2003 (IRIN) - The health ministry of the Republic of Congo (ROC), together with the World Health Organisation (WHO), on 14 November confirmed that a new outbreak of acute haemorrhagic fever syndrome in the northwestern department of Cuvette Ouest was, in fact, the Ebola virus. On 7 November, WHO had reported that a total of 12 suspected cases of acute haemorrhagic fever syndrome including nine deaths had been reported in Mbomo District in Cuvette Ouest. "Findings of blood-sample analyses were officially communicated to us on Friday [14 November] by the World Health Organisation," ROC Health Minister Dr...

BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo Nov. 14 — Health officials on Friday confirmed Ebola as the cause of 11 deaths in the northern forests, signaling the Republic of Congo's second outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever this year. Blood specimens from corpses suspected to have been infected with the deadly virus have tested positive, national public health chief Damase Bozongo said. "We can now affirm that it was Ebola," he told reporters. A World Health Organization spokesman, Boniface Bibousse, also verified the outbreak in the Cuvette West region, saying it was sending two epidemiologists to the area on Saturday. First reports from...

BRAZZAVILLE (Reuters) - Nine people have died in a suspected outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus in a remote forest region of Congo Republic where 120 people were killed by the disease earlier this year, officials said on Friday. Health Minister Alain Moka said the disease appeared to have broken out again near Mbomo, some 440 miles north of the central African nation's capital Brazzaville and just across the border from Gabon. "We just had a meeting about the resurgence of the Ebola virus in Cuvette-Ouest," he told reporters in Brazzaville. There is no known cure for Ebola, which is...

Ebola suspected in Congo deaths From a correspondent in the Republic of Congo 06nov03 SEVEN people have died in the Republic of Congo from what could be another outbreak of the deadly Ebola virus, health ministry officials said today. The seven died around October 31 in the remote northern Cuvette West region, which was struck by Ebola earlier this year. Five members of a single family died that day in Mbanza, about 900km northeast of the capital, Brazzaville. Two nurses who treated them at a clinic in the nearby village of Mbomo also died. A health ministry letter sent to...

SNIP.... Already 24 conservative US bishops, have threatened a permanent break with the church if Robinson is confirmed. The Archbishop of Canterbury previously had issued a veiled plea for the Episcopal Church to desist from the appointment. The Episcopal Church will also decide this week on whether to accept the blessing of same-sex unions.

How HIV does its vanishing act Agence France Presse - July 9, 2003 PARIS, July 9 (AFP) - Scientists in the United States believe the AIDS virus craftily hijacks an immune cell to help it evade elimination by powerful anti-retroviral drugs. Dismaying evidence started to emerge a few years ago that highly active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART), introduced in 1995, was not the HIV slayer that it initially appeared to be. It was discovered that HAART can beat the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) back to below detectable levels in the bloodsteam -- but, as soon as the medication is stopped, the...